Jones' index, for subfactors, is not quite an answer to this question. The range of possible values of indices of subfactors has both a discrete part (indices less than 4 must be of the form $4 \cos^2(\frac{\pi}{n})$ for $n \geq 3$) and a continuous part (any number $\geq 4$ is attainable).
The reason this is relevant is that the index measures the dimension of the subfactor inside the larger factor -- so the phenomenon which is observed to "jump" at dimension 4, is exactly the possible dimensions!